Life as an iKMS Exco Member

I shared my 3-year life story as an executive committee member of the iKMS at the Leadership Dialogue today. I hope this sharing will better prepare the next exco when members appoint them in the coming February AGM.

November 2007 – I was approached by Patrick Lambe who was then the iKMS President to join the executive committee. I hesitated the offer mainly due to the uncertainty of what lies ahead upon accepting this role. His assurance of my expertise fit to redesign the iKMS website had me co-opted as an Exco member shortly after.

At that time, there was already a team formed to look after the website project. Requirements were specified and the IT vendor appointed. I remember the 2 meetings we attended at the Straits Knowledge office contained good discussions to clarify our requirements. It seemed like we can look forward to the design phase when the vendor went MIA. We wrote to the vendor and called him several times on his mobile and office with no avail. We fell short of visiting him personally at the office. It felt painful that the sunken investment could not be recovered. It was probably the demoralisation led by the incident that has put the project on hold for a period of time. Being the newest member of the team, I wasn't sure if the protocol was right for me to re-instate the project. I was also concern that the inertia needed to re-instate the project would be overwhelming and WIIFM to do it. So we kept quite about it for around 5 months.

I can't quite remember how it happened, but we somehow started to discuss about the website project again. I had the opportunity to touch up the requirements based on our discussions with the last vendor. We also turned to evaluate Joomla, an open source content management platform that has a strong developer community. The intention for Joomla was to keep the second project cost low and squeeze it within the original budget. We posted up the RFP again and invited 3 vendors for a shortlisting interview at the SSC office. During the process of identifying vendors for the interview, I took special care to invite vendors that were suggested by other members first, and to leave the vendor whom I knew to the last. We were relieved that the quote by our preferred vendor fell within the original budget allocated for the project.

Dramatic incidents just seemed to befall this project. Halfway through development, the software developer ran off with the codes for reasons that we still don’t know. The web graphics designer quited and the job was passed to another designer. The design techniques were back in early 90's, primarily using tables for the placement of page elements. For those of you who are familiar with web projects, re-designing the web graphics design professionally after the developer has build codes based on it mean a major re-work. As much as I didn't want to, I spent many sessions at Starbucks with the newly assigned developer to overhaul the technical aspects of the design. On some occasions, it was inevitable for me to tip-toe out of office. As we progress, I realised that Joomla was rich in features, too rich - and as a result made the website more and more unusable as we progress to the development of other modules. It was around this time that I felt that the rest of the team members had subtly disappeared. I felt lonely and a little helpless. I felt that I did a bad job. Investments had been made for the detailed requirements analysis and I felt trapped between continuing the project or to look for alternatives. I felt tired and wondered how I could get myself out of this rut. The worst of these is to fulfill the promise of delivering a website at KM Singapore 2008, which we did - a pretty unusable website.

I was very disgruntled. There was no progress to Phase II of the project. The developer faced difficulties finding matching plug-ins and it was too much effort to develop them. Show stopper - we are stuck. The best thing we could do is to negotiate compensation from the vendor and terminate the contract. As you may guess, the project halted again.

It then occurred to me that there could be potential SAAS solutions out there that will meet most of our needs. I kept my finger crossed and started my research. To my delight, I came across such a solution and took to flight an immediate trial account and did a little POC. I discussed the results with some of the web team members, and new web team members. They were supportive of the idea. Setting up and configuring was such a breeze and it supported all our BAU activities such as events registration, membership management, communications and etc. I was so ready and excited with another of my team mate to share this during the Feb 2010 AGM. However, I was slammed by some of the ex-team members to leave out the intended collaboration and information organisation aspects of the website. My team mate was then exploring other options for collaboration. We have to live with the criticism and proceed with the website roll-out after the joined agreement made by the members at the AGM. The new website was launched in May 2010, 3 months after the AGM.

I was nominated the VP of iKMS during the Feb 2010 AGM with the support of my fellow member, who felt that my silent dedication had earned me the right to assume this position. I wouldn't deny that the idea of being a VP felt very good, it felt like I've achieved some kind of professional recognition. But at the same time, I need to be accountable for the website operations, iKMS knowledge resources and SIGs development. Well Mr. VP, you're also suppose to look into e-conversion of iKMS publications, think of ways to handle the surplus of hardcopy publications and make sure resources are being published whenever they are made available. Around 2 months left before the next AGM and as my day job challenges me, I carry with me a mental burden that the chances of getting these done in time are slim.

As if this was not enough, I lead a collaborative effort with CSC to nurture the intranet SIG, and hopefully future SIGs to come. The intranet SIG is something I wish to handover once we've identified a suitable leader. The collaboration was necessary - because if there were 2 similar SIGs, the members’ base would be almost the same. It would also require more effort from either side to produce quality activities and content for the members. I have not regretted this collaboration because CSC has been very objective in advancing the intranet practice, and it has been fulfilling. iKMS provides the online SIG platform, has the network to invite experts, and CSC has the expertise to nurture CoPs. But this collaboration also brings to the table issues surrounding the exclusion of our private sector members and inclusion of SIG members who are not iKMS members. We have to look into these issues soon.

The one thing that I cherish in iKMS is the opportunity to identify and make really good friends. The ability to serve a cause that I'm deeply passionate about is really satisfying; something that I shall not talk too much about or else it'll lose its effect. I urge you to be a contributing member of iKMS, but only if you could put the development of the iKM practice and the members before yourself. And when you do, try to stay committed to your responsibilities, and look for a successor quickly the moment you can't. I do not say this as a role model, but as a recovery from my foolishness.